A great WordPress.com site

Archive for the tag “Dukes of Norfolk”

Note to my Ricardian friends. Joan Neville, wife to William Fitzalan Earl of Arundel and sister to Warwick the Kingmaker is buried in the Fitzalan Chapel, St Nicholas, Arundel. Their tomb and monument can be counted as among the most exquisite from that period of English tomb building.

Effigies of Joan Neville and her husband William Fitzalan Earl of Arundel

In this post, we reminded our readers that a lineal Lancastrian is a person descended from Blanche, the younger daughter of Henry of Grosmont, not from her husband, John of Gaunt, by another wife.

Titles usually fit into these categories:
i) To begin with, many older titles were created before Letters Patent in such a way that they could pass directly through the female line.
ii) Newer (late mediaeval onwards) titles were created under Letters Patent and theoretically could not but were in practice, as we shall see.
iii) Many Scottish titles, which are similar to category i. A good example is the late Michael Abney-Hastings (left, also known as “Britain’s Real Monarch”), who succeeded his mother and grandmother to the Earldom of Loudon after they both lost their only brothers during the World Wars.

In a significant number of category ii cases, the title in question was re-conferred on the previous holder’s son-in-law, in jure uxoris, before passing to the couple’s children. This is a frequently observed constitutional fiction, as these cases, some of them close to Richard III, testify:
1) Richard’s uncle and posthumous father-in-law the Kingmaker (right) was Earl of Warwick in jure uxoris. He was killed in 1471 and left two daughters, who died in 1477 and 1485 but his widow Anne Beauchamp, whose brother had previously been Duke of Warwick, remained as Countess until she died in 1492. Only then did her remaining grandson inherit the title.
2) Although the Dukedom of Norfolk is now (from 1483) limited to “the heirs male of the first Duke, lawfully begotten”, it passed through female hands several times before then. Margaret of Brotherton held it first, then her daughter’s son Thomas Mowbray. Anne, the last Mowbray was orphaned in 1476 and was Duchess until her 1481 death, as Edward IV sought to hijack the title for his middle son, Richard of Shrewsbury. John Howard was then “created” to this title through his mother. Under normal circumstances, it would have been in abeyance because his aunt’s male line, the Berkeleys, was still in existence. William Howard similarly married Mary Stafford in 1637, after her teenage brother’s death and was created Viscount Stafford, although
Mary retained the Barony for life.
3) Thomas of Woodstock was Earl of Essex, as was his daughter’s son, Henry Bourchier (d.1483) and Henry’s great-granddaughter Anne (d.1571). Similarly, Henry’s granddaughter Cecily married John Devereux and their great-grandson, Walter, was Earl of Essex from 1572. Their son, executed in 1601, is shown left.
4) In this case, we reintroduce Blanche. John of Gaunt was only “created” Duke in 1362 after Blanche’s father, elder sister Maud and infant niece had died. It is through Blanche, although we know it to be a fiction, that Henry IV claimed the throne.
5) Finally, we show (right) the sister of the present Duke of Norfolk and her famous late husband. Lady Carina Fitzalan-Howard has a brother and an elder sister. The 1483 remainder precludes her inheritance of the title.

In summary:
1) None of these titles passed to a child by the “wrong” wife of an in jure uxoris peer.
2) Some feminist writers, including some of the noblewomen who cannot inherit the titles, have said that such remainders are now an anachronism. However, to cancel them today would surely discriminate against past women, such that their fathers would not have inherited in the first place.

… is the actor Danny Dyer. In the new series of “Who do you think you are?” , he will be shown to have Edward III and William I as ancestors. In a previous series, Sir Matthew Pinsent was shown to be descended from Edward I via the Howards of Norfolk and an eighteenth century General.

Of course, Edward III had a large family that must have continued to expand over the generations but there would have been a counteracting tendency for his descendants to marry each other. Dyer has other interesting relatives, including Thomas Cromwell, with whom he shares other connections.

You will hopefully remember, from the above, that the first child by Katherine de Roet usually attributed to John of Gaunt may well have been legally (and biologically) her son by Sir Hugh Swynford. The other two Beaufort sons were childless and their sister married Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland, giving all of her descendants a different surname. So, by 1447, only the issue of John, Earl of Somerset were still Beauforts by name and that name is now in doubt for them, together with their Edward III descent. Given that one, or both, of Henry VII’s parents fall into this category, this is an important question.

We may have to wait some time to confirm Somerset’s biological father but Ashdown-Hill’s The Wars of The Roses has clarified the position of the Dukes of Somerset and their line. Pages 44-45 show that the Earl married Margaret Holland, great-granddaughter of Edward I and great-great-great-granddaughter of Henry III by the Lancaster (Crouchback) connection. Edmund, Earl of Kent was her great-grandfather, thus the Somersets have a slight claim to the throne. It is, however, inferior to those from Edward II’s other brothers and half-brothers, including the Mowbrays and Howards of Norfolk, as the table shows:Henry III